A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post discussing our recent paper that links Leading Marketers with financial outperformance.In our study, these Leading Marketers had 40% higher revenue growth and twice the gross profit growth.Naturally, the next question you’d ask is “how do I become a leading marketer?”And that’s exactly what I’m going to talk about over my next few posts.

To kick things off, we found that Leading Marketers engage with their customers across a variety of channels.These leading marketers are more likely to have integrated inbound, outbound and offline marketing programs in some or all channels.They are more likely to use interaction optimization technology in all of their channels.And they are also more likely to adjust offers in real-time across all channels.In short, they create a “System of Engagement” that allows them to engage each customer as an individual, across multiple channels.

So if leading marketers are creating a system of engagement to deliver targeted messaging across channels, what specific tactics are they using?To answer that, we looked closer at mobile and social channels.

Essentially, a number of tactics within these channels can be considered “table stakes.”Everybody has a mobile version of their website and delivers mobile e-mails.Everybody has a social networking page on a site like Facebook and most engage in micro-blogging (Twitter).But there are some specific, innovative tactics where we saw differences between leading marketers and others.

When it comes to mobile, we found that leading marketers were more likely to use mobile messaging campaigns, location based targeting, and mobile-specific ads.For social, leading marketers were more likely to develop apps for 3rd party networking sites (Facebook), leverage social/local group buying (Groupon), and participate in location-based games (Foursquare).All of this means that leading marketers are faster to begin leveraging emerging/trending technologies to see if they can enhance the system of engagement.Some of these tactics may or may not prove to be effective in the long run, but the leading marketers get there first… not unlike the adage “fail fast, fail often”.By being at the forefront with these tactics, they stand to benefit when they come across something that’s especially effective.

It’s also interesting to note that location-based tactics saw greater use by leading marketers in both mobile and social.When you think about a system of engagement that strives to deliver targeted, personalized, relevant offers in real-time, it makes perfect sense that location-data is a key component to enhancing that ability.

There are a number of ideas you can take away from our data, but there’s one over-riding principle that I think is worth taking to heart:Innovation.Leading marketers aren’t afraid of trying out new channel engagement technologies or tactics.They get there first and they find out what works.They don’t worry about whether a channel is completely mature… they jump in and get their hands dirty.This enables them to be proactive with their customers, rather than reactive.

Platform as a service (PaaS) is at a critical stage in its life cycle – with promising business benefits offset by lingering reservations. PaaS promises increased flexibility, lower costs and higher quality IT services, while maintaining control over data and applications. It sits squarely between infrastructure as a service and software as a service, and could prove to be the most transformational of the three main types of cloud computing.

The IBM Center for Applied Insights wanted to explore attitudes around PaaS in order to identify leading practices in PaaS adoption and provide recommendations on how to exploit its potential. We interviewed over 1,500 IT decision makers in 18 countries and a wide range of industries so we could better understand their motivations, experiences and concerns relating to PaaS. This week, we released the results of our exploration in our latest paper “Exploring the frontiers of cloud computing – Insights from platform as a service pioneers”.

The report goes into more detail on the benefits and challenges surrounding PaaS, how to overcome the challenges and what an enterprise can do to start, or continue, their PaaS journey. For a view from cloud pioneers CLD Partners, check out their post on IBM’s Thoughts on Cloud blog. For more information about IBM’s SmartCloud Application Services launch and the study check out a recent article by ZDNet.

What is driving these shifts? In a January 28, 2012 New York Times Op-Ed piece Made in the World , Thomas Friedman argues, “Many CEOs, …increasingly see the world as a place where their products can be made anywhere through global supply chains (often assembled with nonunion-protected labor) and sold everywhere.” Globally integrated supply chains are transforming traditional business models and shifting yesterday’s outsourcing choices and trade-offs.

The transfer of control of a process, product, or service to an external provider can take a variety of forms. The value in strategic outsourcing can include an organization’s ability to:

Reduce costs

Improve services delivery

Engage in strategic partnerships that enable innovation, growth, and desired business outcomes

Traditional strategic outsourcing has often centered on transferring services to an external services provider with a focus on cost reduction. Outsourcing models are changing in new ways - why? What is driving these shifts and what can an organization do to capitalize on these changes?

Our team at the IBM Center for Applied Insights set out earlier this year to investigate market changes, identify emerging trends, and develop evidence-based research that explores how forward-thinking companies are responding to these trends.

Our premise is that the changing global dynamic, combined with technology-driven market shifts, is creating an opportunity for organizations to move beyond sourcing primarily for cost advantage to partnering for competitive advantage and desired business outcomes. Some of the technology-fueled market shifts reshaping the outsourcing landscape include:

Big data generated from multiple sources is changing how organizations make decisions and leverage predictive insights for competitive advantage

Recently, IBM conducted a survey of 97 C-Suite Sourcing executives and found that seven out of ten plan to outsource for strategic reasons like driving growth and innovation. Based on their chief motivation, we categorized these organizations as:

Cost-cutters–27 percent outsource their IT infrastructure to reduce operations costs

Innovators–36 percent outsource multiple parts of the business to enable transformation and innovation

What we found most interesting was the progression of objectives across these three groups. Cost-cutters indicate they want one primary outcome from their sourcing relationships: cost savings. The majority of growth-seekers want to reduce costs, but also faster time to market for new products and services, and increased efficiency and effectiveness across the entire value chain. Innovators expect all of the above–and more. In addition to cost reduction, speed-to-market, and value chain efficiency, the majority of innovators want providers to help them: